Hospitals ready to make room if COVID-19 cases surge
Bridgeport Hospital has been approved to repurpose an auditorium at its Milford campus and clear a cafeteria to make room for more beds to treat COVID-19 patients.
In Hartford, the Connecticut Convention Center has been converted into a field hospital as a precaution in case there’s a surge in patients.
You wouldn’t know it by these scenarios, but CO
VID-19 hospitalizations have steadily declined in recent weeks.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Connecticut hospitals, according to some health experts, are even more strained now than during the initial COVID wave despite less patients being treated for the disease.
That’s because during the spring, elective procedures were suspended, allowing for more space for COVID patients and staff to care for them.
“In the first wave, everything was closed down,” said Dr. Victor Morris, chief medical officer at Bridgeport Hospital. “Patients who had ‘normal’ (non-COVID) procedures weren’t coming in. Now we’re taking care of everyone who comes to our door.”
To make space for everyone, Morris said, Bridgeport Hospital has needed to get creative. This month, the hospital was cleared by the state to use the auditorium at its Milford campus to treat patients, creating space for 15 extra beds. The hospital is also approved to use the cafeteria at Bridgeport Hospital, if needed, for an additional 20 beds.
“You could still go there to get food, there would just be no place to sit,” Morris said.
Morris hopes the hospital won’t have to reopen the
32-bed tent that was set up outside the facility last
spring to help handle the overflow of patients.
While COVID hospitalizations dropped by 24 statewide over the weekend, as of Tuesday, they had risen again slightly and there were 1,159 beds occupied by coronavirus patients with a potential post-holiday surge on the horizon.
Though it’s still below the state’s April 22 peak of 1,972 hospitalized COVID patients, those with the illness are occupying 15 percent of the state’s 7,731 staffed hospital beds, said Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer. He added that, of all the people hospitalized in the state, about 21 percent are COVID patients.
Like Bridgeport Hospital, Yale New Haven, which is part of the same health system, is finding ways to create more room.
Yale is using pediatric beds it operates at the Milford campus for adult nonCOVID patients, said Dr. Thomas Balcezak, chief clinical officer for Yale New Haven Health.
Yale has also shifted elective surgery patients to its Shoreline Outpatient Surgery Center.
“That frees up space and staff,” Balcezak said. In fact, it’s the staffing issue he’s more concerned about.
“We can create new spaces, but we can’t create new people,” he said, adding that the Yale health network has taken some measures to reallocate staff, such as moving nurses in management roles to bedsides.
Hartford HealthCare has partnered with the state to create a 600-bed alternative care facility at the Connecticut Convention Center for patients who are stable but are not ready to return home.
About 70 members of the National Guard last week set up the facility that Dr. James Cardon, chief clinical integration officer with Hartford HealthCare, considers an “insurance policy” if COVID hospitalizations soar.
“We wanted to do this before it was needed,” Cardon said. “We still have the holiday to get through.”
But not all hospitals have needed to make adjustments.
St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, for example, isn’t yet planning to re-purpose non-medical spaces for patients, said Dr. Daniel Gottschall, vice president of medical affairs for the Fairfield region of Hartford HealthCare and St. Vincent’s.
“We haven’t had to do that yet,” he said, but added that, as part of the Hartford HealthCare system, St. Vincent’s can move patients to other hospitals within the chain if they get overwhelmed.
Greenwich Hospital, which is part of the Yale New Haven Health system, also isn’t rearranging for a surge in patients.
“At this time, we have not had to surge into nontraditional areas to care for any inpatients,” said Marc Kosak, Greenwich Hospital’s chief operating officer. However, he added, “we do have a well-defined surge plan to increase capacity as needed as we did in the first wave.”
Kosak said the hospital has made some adjustments to accommodate the combination of regular and COVID patients.
“We have moved some units around so that we can keep our COVID-positive patients together in particular areas of the hospital,” he said. “We have also equipped rooms that were not traditionally used to support higher levels of care with appropriate clinical monitoring equipment to give us flexibility to surge up and down as our census and patient care need dictates.”